


Negative Space

by Lafayette1777



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, Drinking, M/M, Relationship Confusion, and yes i do know im like 4348798539 years late to the party on this one, i dunno what to tag this as besides self-indulgent bullshit but here it is, mentions of child abuse, my favorite tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: He’s not sure when, exactly, his attitude about Wu shifted so remarkably; he’s just very glad it did.(And: the former Prince Wu, heir to the Earth throne and last representative of the Hou-Ting dynasty, finally finds his calling.)





	Negative Space

**Author's Note:**

> i finally finished watching korra and the ending literally fucking killed me it was so lovely so here i am, trying to resurrect myself via fic. i might write korrasami as well in the near future, we shall see. 
> 
> also you can tell i was having a coincident existential crisis while writing this because it took me a fucking month to write 6000 words. wow. 
> 
> thanks for reading yall!!

_I._

 

It starts slowly.

Their morning routine in Republic City doesn’t vary much—the days, inevitably, blend together. Mako, in hindsight, cannot recall the day of the week, or the month. Only that he must have been guarding Hou-Ting Wu for some time at this point, if he knows himself. Or maybe that’s just what he prefers to believe.

As per usual, they meet in the bathroom, hunching over the twin vanity while Mako shaves and Wu combs his hair scrupulously into its trademark shape. They are bare-chested, still half-swaddled in the twilight of sleep. It is a focused, quiet time; one of the few times of day wherein Wu does not seem to feel the need to hear his own voice. In retrospect, perhaps it’s not so surprising that _this_ would be the moment where things would begin to shift, to turn over, to burn off into something else. Truth always seems nearer in the early hours. At some point in this auspicious and unknown morning, Mako glances up in the mirror and finds Wu’s eyes already on him, very green and strangely serious in a way he so rarely is. 

And, when he catches Mako staring back, he takes his time before looking away. 

Wu has finished with his hair. He gathers the various oils and pomades into a neat pile to the left of the sink, then brushes past Mako on his way out the door. Their hands touch, perhaps by chance. Mako doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe, until Wu’s lithe expanse of brown skin has disappeared back into the bedroom. 

It should be nothing, he thinks distantly. Of the multitude of perfunctory touches Wu had bestowed on him, he’s unsure why this is the one to uproot him, to have him turning the tap on the coldest it’ll go. His hands steam when he puts them under the water, clouding the mirror and obfuscating the redness in his cheeks. He takes a deep breath, and makes a valiant effort to stop thinking. 

It is a temporary fix. 

 

 

The days before the coronation are empty in a way they haven’t been since Mako was a street kid, skulking about the city during the daylight hours, looking for food or trouble or some combination of the two. Now, though, there is no shortage of anything—empty days, for people like Wu, means luxury, not starvation or failure or a long, cold night ahead. It means wandering in and out of new restaurants and shops and bars, Mako tailing along and oscillating between abrupt watchfulness and careful neutrality. It means drinking tea in the Upper Ring of Little Ba Sing Se, in the facsimile of some famous tea shop Mako has never heard of. 

Here, too, routines crop up. 

Wu’s eyes are following a long-haired teenager across the plaza over the rim of his teacup. “He’s wearing a lot of Wolfbats merchandise, but in fact he’s a Hog Monkeys fan with a sense of humor.”

“Or he just likes rooting for cheating assholes,” replies Mako, without looking up from the newspaper in front of him. 

This is the usual pattern—Wu makes up stories about passersby and Mako judges them mercilessly for whatever he can think of. The back and forth of it is comfortingly immemorial; neither of them will ever truly be right or wrong, but occasionally Wu will act as though as he’s achieved some great victory but getting Mako to crack a smile. 

Wu has set his eyes on a new target. “Lots of Water Tribe pride. Has a secret simmering hatred for cold weather, so she runs the cultural center in Republic City and pretends like it’s a great sacrifice to be away from the poles.”

“Probably thinks all firebenders are monsters.” Maybe there’s a bitter edge to his voice; in truth, the words arrive far ahead of his thoughts, before any semblance of control can reign them in. The paper in front of him has gone out of focus. 

“No, that’s what _you_ think.”

Mako looks up, finally, to find Wu appraising him with one eyebrow raised, that ever-present, irritating smirk pulling at the edge of his mouth. Mako just scowls. One of the many vaguely unsettling things about Wu is that he is not as oblivious as he seems, especially on the rare occasion he bothers to think about someone other than himself.

It’s sunset, but Wu doesn’t show any sign of wanting to turn in. They wander out of Little Ba Sing Se and back into Republic City proper, into parts Mako begins to know better. Parts that are probably a security risk, if he’s honest, for someone like Wu, but he feels so at ease trotting through the familiar streets that he can’t bring himself to urge them to turn around. The air is mild, the sky turning shades of orange, the avenues friendly and their pace easy—if he stopped to think about it, then this would be peaceful. He might smile. 

He doesn’t.

Wu has paused at the edge of an alleyway. It takes Mako another moment to step in beside him and peer into the encroaching darkness. Beyond the two skyscrapers that sandwich the narrow alley, a flimsy dock extends out into the bay. Mako can just make out the shape of unlit paper lanterns attached to the tops of the piers, drifting gently in the same breeze that ruffles his uniform. He follows Wu through the alley to the lip of the dock, eyes alert in the night.

“It reminds me of something,” Wu is saying. “I just don’t know what.” 

Mako tilts his head, feeling the distant inkling of memory twirl away somewhere unreachable in the back of his mind. 

“You ever get Déjà Vu, Mako?”

Mako just shakes his head and watches the slow bob of one of the cold lanterns in the wind. “Maybe if they were lit.” He summons fire into the palm of his hand and looks over at Wu. “Why are your eyes closed?”

Wu grins and shrugs theatrically, but doesn’t open his eyes. “I like the surprise of it.”

Mako snorts, but a few quick strikes and a moment later each lantern is lit and casting a glittering reflection onto the inky surface of the bay. “Open your eyes,” he murmurs, wondering why it suddenly feels as though all the fight, all the tension of the last twenty-odd years, has gone out of him. 

Wu is looking at him silently again, like that morning in the mirror. Mako is wise enough to know not to look back. Not here, among the swaying lanterns and tugging breeze, if he intends to stay sane. 

 

 

Mako has been paying enough attention to current events to have an inkling that the coronation is going to go sideways before it actually does; still, it ends up being a rather sorry affair, inkling or not. Instead of dealing with any of the geopolitical consequences of Kuvira seizing power, Wu ends up leading them off to get smashed in the first bar they encounter on this side of the city. Mako stays sober and awaits the unfolding mess. Drunk Wu, as it turns out, is not actually that different than sober Wu—he’s still trying to chat up every warm body in sight, still singing out every other sentence in a pitchy cacophony—except there’s something vaguely depressing about it now that there’s nothing really to be jolly about. 

Once Wu has propositioned half the bar and been propositioned by the other half, Mako decides it’s time to settle the tab. 

“Do you think everything’s going to be alright, Mako?” Wu slurs, slinking haphazardly down the sidewalk. It’s a bit hard to understand him; he’s linked their arms and is currently pressing his head into Mako’s side for balance while they walk, causing Mako to compensate for his stumbling gait. 

Mako is silent for a long while. He wonders, not for the first time, where Korra is. Replays the argument with Bolin in his mind and feels that strange mix of regret and ire wash through him. Whatever he says is going to need to reassure both of them. “In the long run,” he decides. “It’ll probably be fine.”

Wu makes some sort of muffled noise of agreement that reverberates against Mako’s ribcage. A man in a Wolfbats headband passes them under the next streetlight, and Wu’s head bobs up long enough to send Mako a smirking look. Mako turns his head away to hide his smile. 

Back in the hotel room, Wu finally manages to separate him from his inhibitions. Mako starts drinking along with him, out of boredom and pent-up work stress and Wu’s question, which has started replaying in his mind: _Do you think everything’s going to be alright, Mako?_ The alcohol, it turns out, is not easing his anxiety. Wu, somewhere behind his head, is tuning the radio, and Mako leans back on the couch in the Junior Suite and finds himself realizing that he’s not sure what _alright_ even is, what it ever was, what it will be in the future. His life for the last three years has been suspended animation, separated from friends and family and doing whatever has been required of him in the moment that it is required. Waiting for some unknown thing to put his life back on some equally unknown but intrinsically correct track. Before that, though, was just strife, and pro-bending, and before all of it was hunger and cold and a life on the streets and watching his parents die in a haze of fire. He doesn’t know what _alright_ is. He never has. 

Wu comes over to slump next to him on the couch, tugging the half empty saké bottle from Mako’s hands. He’s singing along, off-key, to the ballad on the radio, looking rather pitiful now that he’s not obscured by the sepia light of the bar. Mako reaches up, absently, to scratch at the back of his own head, shirt sleeve slipping back, and Wu motions toward his now exposed arm with the bottle. 

“We match, tough guy,” Wu mutters, trying for a smile. It’s so lopsided at this point that it’s nearly a grimace. 

Mako’s eyes pan slowly over to his own bicep, to the old cigarette burn imbedded in the soft skin just above his elbow. From his days with the Triple Threats, he recalls—someone was drunk, trying to make a point, and had grabbed the nearest scrawny arm they could find. Mako had gleaned early on to not be the easiest prey in the room, but there had been a bit of a learning curve nonetheless. 

He can still remember it in vivid detail—the smell of burnt flesh, the bright, searing agony, Bolin’s whimper of fear when Mako cried out in pain. The ash scattering across his skin. His palms still heat at the thought. 

Wu is shifting on the couch so that he can lift the edge of his shirt and undo the top button of his pants. Mako, slow and thick behind a few layers of alcohol, just watches perplexedly. Then Wu’s left hip is exposed, smooth and unblemished except for a unevenly round cigar burn just above the jutting bone. 

“How’d you get that?” Mako asks, leaning forward unsteadily. 

“My great-aunt and I did not get along swimmingly,” Wu replies, attempting a nonchalant shrug. “It was a long time ago.”

Mako thinks, distantly, that it’s possible Wu doesn’t know what _alright_ is either. 

A moment later, he realizes he’s still rather close to Wu—they’re still breathing the same air. And, again, Wu’s eyes are on him, and some mix of the alcohol and the turbulence inside him keeps him from looking away. This is a dangerous path, he recognizes; the sliver of sanity he’d felt slipping away that night amongst the lanterns is hanging by a thread. 

Then, it happens: their lips meet, Wu’s hands come up to cup his face, and suddenly they’re flush against each other. All distance falls away. The details of it are fuzzy, through the alcohol, but Mako remembers stumbling toward the bed, clumsily shedding clothes as they go. And later the weight of Wu on top of him while he murmurs _Relax, Mako_ and having the vague sense of enjoying himself, despite the rather sorry, sozzled occasion that it is. 

 

 

_II._

 

Wu, if he’s being honest, is no stranger to deluding himself. In his younger days, he’d told himself that the reason he and his great aunt didn’t get on was because she simply didn’t bother to get to know him. This, of course, is convenient fiction, the sort created by a hurt and baffled child. She had known him longer and better than anyone else, since birth, and more intently since the early loss of his parents. She had seen him in his entirety. She had simply not liked what she saw. Especially when she drank—hence the jagged, ovaloid blemish on his hip. 

On the day he’d left Ba Sing Se, he’d caught only the barest glimpse of her body—just her slippered feet, really, as they’d shepherded him rapidly past the throne room while the city crumbled into chaos around them. Regardless, the image of her pale, limp feet is imprinted behind his eyes; it appears, sometimes, in his dreams, always accompanied by the shock of fear and adrenaline that the original sight itself inspired. He’d only had the barest inkling, then, that his life was about to change, that things were about to get a lot more complicated. He was distantly aware that the city was falling apart, that his life was at risk, that when they’d torn him from his calligraphy practice that afternoon he’d left behind his favorite pen set. It was only when they’d arrived in Republic City, when he was alone in a hotel room with two unfamiliar faces guarding his door, that he’d collapsed into something primordial, and cried. Cried for his lost life, for Ba Sing Se, for the Queen. There had been something particularly horrific about finding himself alone, the last Hou-Ting standing. 

He likes to think he’s past some of his more childish delusions. Still, the morning comes, and he’s not ready for it. 

When they’ve both sobered up in the light of the morning, Mako won’t look at him. Wu probably could have seen that coming, but there’s still a feeling in his chest remarkably like pain when he shuts the bathroom door behind him to begin his morning regimen alone. The burn on his hip stares back at him from the mirror. 

When he returns to the bedroom, hungover but groomed, the bed is empty and Mako’s eyes are coldly professional.

 

 

It doesn’t disrupt their relationship as dramatically as it probably should. 

The alcohol helps, probably—they can both rely on the pretense that their memories of the evening after the coronation are a little foggy. Wu still hits on everyone in sight, perhaps now with a bit more of a malicious edge when Mako’s in range. It’s not on purpose but it’s not quite by accident, either. He becomes more annoying; Mako reacts to it with impatience and exasperation and an impressive range of scowls. There are no more trips to Little Ba Sing Se, no more afternoons spent exchanging quips over tea. 

It feels like things are falling apart—between them, but also on a larger scale. Kuvira is marching on Zaofu. He’s distantly aware that he’s supposed to be leading a kingdom that is currently at war with itself while he lounges in the tub of the Junior Suite, wondering whether Mako is still on the other side of the bathroom door, a stalwart sentry against the forces of evil and war and unexpected pies. But he doesn’t know what war is; he can’t picture it. All he sees when he closes his eyes are his aunt’s pale, dead feet, and then his throat constricts and that’s enough to stop him thinking about Ba Sing Se and Kuvira and the fate of the world altogether. 

And then there’s the kidnapping. 

 

 

 

Afterwards, he doesn’t feel as traumatized as he expects; Wu blames the numbness in his bones on the remnants of whatever drug they’d used to knock him out. He climbs into the bed they’ve allotted him at Asami Sato’s estate, now occupied by Mako’s extended family, and tries to unwind the tension from his shoulders. It won’t let go of him. 

He’s been trying to avoid the war and so it came to him. There’s something slightly poetic about it that he can appreciate. 

Eventually, he gives up on sleep. His muscles won’t uncoil, his heart won’t slow its restive, fearful beat, even if his chest feels empty and sick with worry. The darkness of night, away from the familiarity of the city, has brought the future closer than he can stand, even if his role in it still seems frighteningly undefined. He slips into a green silk dressing gown and pads toward the door, on the hope that stretching his legs will clear off some of the night’s anxious clout. 

He’s not prepared to find Mako sitting on the floor outside his room, chin resting on his knees, brow furrowed in worry. 

Mako’s head turns to look up at him, amber eyes registering no surprise. What he says next is clearly very well-rehearsed in his mind. “It seemed like a security breach not to have anyone watching your door the night after an attempted kidnapping.”

There are a number of ways Wu could point out the logical fallacies in this statement— _were you just going to stay awake all night? Is it really likely that any intruders that could make it past the police stationed outside could be stopped by you alone by the time they got here?_ —but it feels rather redundant to point out things Mako is fully aware of. Instead, he says, “Are you going to come inside?”

They end up drinking the cold remains of the pot of oolong Mako’s grandmother had brought up an hour ago. Wu finds himself eyeing the crisp, pressed lines of Mako’s uniform, the careful styling of his hair even at this hour, from across the room and smirking inwardly at the vanity of such things. Are the two of them really so different? Wu wonders. Only where it counts. Only where they are complementary in temperament, rather than stubbornly similar. Wu swallows the last of his tea, shakes his head almost imperceptibly, and says, “You look cold.”

Mako has his arms folded tightly across his chest. “I always am.”

“Oh?”

“Street kid thing.” Mako doesn’t explain further, besides, “Even my chi doesn’t help sometimes.”

“Well, you know what I’m going to say,” Wu says, rising to his feet. Finally, a pleasing weariness is beginning to uncoil some of the tension in his chest. And maybe Mako’s presence, too, is helping—something else to focus on, a more familiar mess to untangle. Still, Wu isn’t smiling, isn’t forcing himself to be fluid and jovial, _royal_ in a way no Hou-Ting he knew ever was, and it feels strange to be so serious. “You’re not sleeping in the hallway.”

After that, it doesn’t take much convincing. Once they’re in bed, Mako is far warmer than he claims. 

 

 

The training is mostly useless, both of them have to admit—if not out loud. But it’s something to kill the time. Mako seems oddly reluctant to leave the Sato estate, something Wu is forcing himself, rather unsuccessfully, not to read into. The training sessions usually devolve into talking, wherein the gaps in Mako’s life story are filled in, or their usual endless, meaningless verbal sparring. They do their best caricatures of themselves—Wu talks a mile a minute and Mako gives his strictest deadpan replies. In between conversations, Wu wanders outside to sing to the turtleduck family that has taken up residence in the swimming pool. Yin brings by tea and sweet buns every once in awhile, and Wu usually feigns an injury because there’s not much to find amusing these days besides Mako getting harassed by his grandmother. 

Mostly, though, they’re alone. The rest of the world is far away. 

And it’s good. 

“Listen,” Mako says one afternoon, while Wu makes a show of correcting his still rather flimsy fighting stance. Mako circles him, fingers drifting to brush the back of Wu’s knee to increase the bend. His hand is abrupt and warm against Wu’s skin. “I didn’t say this earlier, but I feel like I should, because I’ve heard that I often don’t say things that I should say, and then everything gets fucked up because I didn’t say anything.”

Wu immediately drops out of the stance and turns to face him, raising both eyebrows. 

Mako’s eyes snap to the floor, and he scratches self-consciously at the back of his head. “So, since the whole thing with the kidnapping happened, what I’ve wanted to say is that I’m sorry and, um, I’m glad you’re not dead.”

Wu just stares at him for a moment, before the laughter makes its way up from his chest and spills out. He clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle it, but it’s too late—he only catches a glimpse of Mako’s scowl before he’s bent over double, ribs shaking.

“I’m telling you I’m glad you’re not dead and you’re laughing?” Mako asks, that familiar brow furrow darkening his eyes. 

Wu recovers enough to stand, and moves toward. Mako, though his arms are crossed defensively, does not move away when Wu lays his hands on his bare shoulders. “It really is charming,” Wu says, swallowing back remnants of the laugh. His face feels warm; his eyes wet. Still, he does feel a little chagrined—there’s actual hurt in Mako’s expression. “It’s charming that you don’t realize that that’s a ridiculous thing to say.”

“You’re one to talk about absurdity,” Mako mutters, but something has begun to loosen in his expression. 

“Big, tough Mako is glad I’m not dead.” Wu smirks. “Wow. What a day.” He reaches up a hand to mockingly caress Mako’s cheek and Mako slaps it away, the edge of a smile pulling at his mouth. Wu retaliates by trying to tackle him, but all that does is give Mako the perfect angle to lift him by the waist and toss him with military precision onto the floor mats. 

“Wu down!” he cries through his laughter, just as Mako lands heavily on top of him.

And then Yin appears in the doorway. 

Mako rolls off of him, the rare smile slipping from his mouth but not entirely from his eyes. Yin, two fresh towels over her arms, regards them with a strangely inscrutable expression. “You better not hurt that prince,” she says finally, eyes on Mako. 

Wu, sitting up on his haunches, looks at his own thin arms—the expanse of unblemished skin. Thinks of the burn where no one can see, of Mako’s careful touch. Wu opens his mouth to tell her that he’s fine, but suddenly it doesn’t seem as though the conversation is still about sparring.

“I won’t,” Mako says quietly. 

It can’t be that simple, Wu thinks. Then again, maybe it’s the only thing that is. 

 

 

The spirit vines are eating people, apparently. Which doesn’t seem quite right, but that’s how Wu understands it, at least. Regardless, Mako is heading back to the city to help Korra deal with the situation. He’s a cop. He deals with things. That’s not actually what he said to the family and Wu, when he announced he’d be heading back to the city, but it’s the sort of thing he _would_ say. Wu has filled in blanks. He’s verbose enough for the both of them. 

Mako does not own very many things. This is true of him in general, Wu knows, but especially true because they left the city in something of a hurry. Wu is slowly growing accustomed to things happening in a hurry, after the first seventeen years of his life in the Upper Ring occurring at a pace almost imperceptibly slow. Mako’s life, by contrast, seems to only ever occur at breakneck speed. He must be exhausted. 

Now, though, he looks the opposite—as he straightens his collar in the mirror, there’s a spark of exhilaration in his eyes. Wu watches from the doorway, and realizes that the very nature of a reprieve is temporary. As is what he understands about Mako’s life, too. 

“You’re going to be alright?” Mako asks, catching his eye in the mirror. He’s trying to get his collar to stand straight. It still makes Wu smirk internally to watch him like this, so oblivious to their similarities. They both have a tendency to take themselves awfully seriously.

“Yin will look after me. I’ll be fine.” It comes out steadier than he expects. Mako, finally, turns to look at him, and it occurs to Wu that his time to deliberate is up. He closes the distance between them with two steps and cups Mako’s cheek, pressing their lips together for just the briefest of seconds. 

“Just wanted to see what that felt like sober,” he murmurs afterward, hesitant to pull away completely. Mako’s hand is still on his elbow.

Without meeting his eyes, Wu undoes the top button of his own shirt and reaches for the item pinned to the inside of his breast. “And I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, but I think you should hold onto this for me.”  
Wu places the royal brooch in Mako’s halfway extended hand, and closes his fingers over it. 

“Are you sure?”

“I am.” Wu closes his eyes. “I trust you. Think of me.”

Mako says nothing. For a moment it seems like he’s going to kiss Wu back, but he doesn’t. Then he’s brushing past him, out the bathroom door and out of sight. 

 

 

_III._

 

It’s while they’re organizing the evacuation plan that it happens. And, even then, it almost slips below the radar anyways; there’s a lot to keep track of. So Mako almost doesn’t notice when Wu multiplies four thousand five hundred and forty-two times thirty seven in his head faster than Raiko can plug it into the massive calculator on his desk. 

The whole room, besides Wu, seems to pause. 

“What?” Wu asks, finally looking up from the map of the boroughs spread out before them. 

“Did you just do that in your head?” Mako asks, eyes narrowed. 

“Do what?”

“That math.” Mako straightens, feeling a few vertebrae crack in protest. They’ve been at it for hours, trying to find enough routes and vehicles out of the city. Wu, for once, seems adequately focused. 

“Yeah.” Wu shrugs. “Is that weird?”

Before Mako can answer, though, another advisor is drawing them back into the map. Mako starts to notice it more, though—how Wu seems to know the right numbers before everyone else does. How with one glance at logistics or budget calculations he seems to have an immediate sense of whether the bottom line will be too short or too wide or right on the nose. Granted, Mako doesn’t know a lot about formal education, but he’s fairly sure that what Wu is too fast to be average. It’s something innate. It’s also vaguely unnerving to him, though he can’t quite discern why. 

It’s only later that the subject comes up again. They have dinner brought to them in the hotel room—Wu has been restored to the Presidential Suite, though with limited mobility in the city for security reasons. As it happens, Wu does not seem to have the energy to do his usual nightly city romp these days anyways, given the fullness of the daylight hours. He seems as eager to get off his feet as Mako. 

“Where’d you learn to do math like that?” Mako asks. He’s using a chopstick to poke skeptically at something squishy Wu has told him to try; after a moment, Wu seems to lose patience, leaning over to pluck it from his plate.

“I dunno. I just do it.” Wu’s brow creases for a moment, his chopsticks and the strange food still in mid-air. “They never told me it was unusual. I guess my aunt wasn’t impressed.”

Mako can ascertain, approximately, who _they_ are—the various architects of Wu’s sheltered life before the fall of Ba Sing Se. “I guess being the future king was special enough.”

“You think the math thing is _special_?” Wu says, raising an eyebrow that’s somewhere between sardonic and actually, naively flattered. 

“I think it’s useful,” Mako replies. “I think it’s the kind of thing a lot of people wish they could do.”

“Like bending.”

“I guess.” Mako looks up at him, and sees Wu looking at him with just the hint of a sly grin curling the edge of his mouth. His eyes are shining. Mako looks away while he still has the willpower to do so. 

Later, when he crawls into his own bed and sees that smile appear again on the inside of his eyelids, he’ll think of the morning he left the Sato estate. Of the way Wu had kissed him, vivid and warm and sober. Of the “royal brooch” Mako is still carrying with him, despite its absurdity, always in easy reach when it’s not pinned to the inside of his uniform. Of the way he should’ve kissed Wu before he left, but didn’t. It feels like a dream.

And now Kuvira’s invading, the city’s emptying out, they’re working themselves to the bone. He’s missed his chance; there’s too much happening. Perhaps it was all rather ludicrous to begin with—the notion of two people with such mismatched backgrounds and dispositions coming together for anything longer than a few moments at a time. And he hasn’t got a very good track history with making relationships work, unusual or not. 

He’s tired. He’s been tired all his life. The future feels concave, despondent, a reward it’s possible he deserves but that he won’t receive. There’s nothing to be done but what he’s always done: sleep and wake up and sleep again. 

 

 

He’s not afraid; he’s just very, very busy. 

It’s only later, once the lightning has overcome him and the pain has fried his nerve endings into numbness and his thoughts into a haze, that he dwells on the fact that he and Wu never had a proper goodbye. Even though Bolin has dragged him out of the mech and he seems to still be alive, the world isn’t quite in focus. It’s only after he sees Kuvira led away in handcuffs that he has the presence of mind to furiously pat himself down for the brooch, finding it still safely pinned inside his jacket. Shortly afterward, he takes a few too many steps in too short a period of time and has the vague sense of collapsing onto Bolin before his vision whites out into nothing. 

This is a victory, he remembers thinking. But all he feels is exhaustion, beneath the pain. And then he doesn’t feel anything at all. 

 

 

There’s a long while where he floats, semi-conscious, in one of the temporary field hospitals set up around the city. Bolin stays with him as best he can while the healers go over and over his arm with globules of glowing blue. It soothes the inflamed skin long enough for them to bandage it, but before long it begins to itch and burn and all the dressings have to come off again for another session with the water. Looking around, though, he’s gotten off easy. The few who stubbornly remained in the city or who were pulled off the sinking ferries have all manner of unsettling wounds, and their moans keep him awake at night, when Bolin is gone. He listens to them and shivers, regardless of the weather—that old chill is back, the one that no amount of inner heat can suppress. It’s the remnant of too many nights spent on the street, he thinks. Too many nights under-nourished and without rest, catching up to him at unexpected moments. Bolin brings him another coat to wear, despite the balmy breeze. 

There’s another thing, too, that keeps him awake, of course. It takes a few days to pinpoint Wu’s position in the chaos of the evacuation. At some point, he was separated from Pema, and they ended up the de facto leads of different refugee camps before aid organizations from other parts of the Republic took over. Some unplanned badgermoles apparently got involved and have made the whole thing even harder for Mako’s addled mind to grasp. Now, though, Wu is on his way back to the city. Mako, during one of his sleepless nights, has the distant realization that the future is barreling toward him rather abruptly. He’s running out of excuses. 

Healed or not, they tell him eventually that they need the bed space for those that are worse off. Bolin helps him into his jacket, and though he itches to straighten the lines of his coat and hair, it’s too much for one hand to accomplish before Bolin is leading him off to the only local rail line still running. 

“Is Wu back yet?” he finds himself asking, once they’re on the train. It’s still strikingly empty, even if residents are trickling back into what remains of the city. He kneads at the bridge of his nose, hoping it’ll convey something like professional ennui and not the fact that being without Wu these days, oddly, feels a lot like suffocation. 

“Not that I know of,” Bolin replies, and then turns to scrutinize him. Mako looks stalwartly ahead. “So what’s up with you and him, anyways?”

“Nothing,” says Mako immediately. And then: “He’s my job.”

Bolin raises an eyebrow. “Well, good. He’s annoying.”

“He’s actually not that bad when he’s not in public,” Mako mutters, pawing restlessly at his bandaged arm. He wishes he could stop himself from talking, but Bolin always has this effect on him—he starts saying things that usually don’t make it outside of his head. Sentimental things. 

Bolin snorts. “That’s not much of an endorsement.”

“Listen, he’s okay, alright?”

“Spirits, Mako, calm down.” Bolin’s expression has turned amused, but not surprised. Mako suppresses a groan and goes back to working at the space between his eyes. 

For a while, there’s only the rhythmic clunk of the train over the raised tracks, and then Bolin says quietly, “Some of the roads in and out of the city are clogged right now, but I think Wu will be able to get in. Just give it some time. He’ll probably be here in time for the wedding.”

“Hmph,” grunts Mako, but he feels himself sit a little straighter. 

 

 

He doesn’t know what he expects, but not this—not Wu, looking impeccable in formalwear but inexplicably different, regarding him with concern and fondness and just a hint of an irritating smirk. 

“Are we going to dance or just stand here?” he asks, but before Mako can reply, he’s pulling him into a brisk step on the nearest corner of the dancefloor. Mako blushes, but allows himself to be shaped and reshaped in Wu’s arms. 

“This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it?” Mako asks, staring down at their moving feet. He’s not sure what he’s asking about—the abdication? The dance? The two of them?

“It’s not what I expected.” His hand slides down Mako’s arm. “But I think I can be useful, you know? Just not as king.” He taps on the side of his head, a sly grin pulling at his mouth. “I can do math _and_ sing. Who knew.”

Mako smiles, and tries to hide it, but Wu cuffs him on the side of the head. “I see that smile, tough guy.” A moment later, though, he turns hesitant. “Listen, um...what you said to Korra, was that—?”

Mako shakes his head quickly. “No, no. I love her as a friend, of course—I said I’d follow her into anything. Nothing more.”

Wu grins, and they simultaneously trip over each other’s feet. “I know your default setting is to angst endlessly about every aspect of your life but this is, in fact, something you can enjoy without complications,” Wu says, massaging Mako’s arm, just above the bandage. “Relax, Mako.”

The phrase forces Mako to be hit, abruptly, by a flash of that drunken night and he dwells, not for the first time, on what he recalls of it. He looks at Wu, and swallows. “You have to go back to Ba Sing Se, don’t you?”

“I do,” replies Wu, without meeting his eyes. He doesn’t seem to be following his own advice; tension has seeped into his posture. 

“And you’ll need a bodyguard while you’re there,” Mako says, matter-of-fact. “At least until this whole abdication thing is set up.”

Wu looks at him curiously. “Maybe even after.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm,” mimics Wu, and his face spreads into a blinding grin. 

Eventually, Mako pulls him from the dance floor, and kisses him until neither of them can breathe. 

 

 

Had he always known, on some level? Had the exasperation always been a little bit of a ruse, ever since he saw the first glimpse of the Wu that exists out of the public eye? He ponders it, in the early hours of the morning, after they’ve retired to Wu’s room in one of the few intact hotels. They lay, half-entangled, beneath the sheets, in the space between reality and unreality, and Mako is warm in a way he so rarely is. It is not the warmth of his chi, but something deeper. Wu shifts in his grip, feigning sleep. The quiet of the morning is pervasive but soft; Mako happily slips into it. He slides from the bed and heads for the adjoining bathroom. 

Later, time will begin to flow again, he knows. Ba Sing Se calls, a brave new world awaits. He’ll half to mold himself into it, somehow. The future, however, is not as exhausting as he once imagined it. It’s close, but not foreboding. It invites. 

Wu, eventually, joins him at the sink, still tousled from sleep. It takes a long moment for him to notice that Mako’s eyes are on him, in the mirror. It’s many similar mornings, synthesized into one blinding moment. Mako’s not sure what’s in store for him in this new world, more than ever before, but _anything with Wu_ sounds like a good place to start. 

Their eyes meet. Neither of them looks away.

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
